Monthly Archives: June 2015

This is a review of an abstract; the original article is in German and I don’t have access to it.

“In many children and adolescents with gender dysphoria only minor or no psychopathology is found.”

However, 43% of the patients seen at the Frankfort University Gender Identity Clinic for children and adolescences have serious mental health issues.

This creates problems in treatment.

The article then discusses four sample cases to show some of the difficulties.

In two cases, “major psychopathology made decision for reassignment very difficult.”

In two other cases, the patients were “not able to follow recommended treatment steps, in these patients diagnostic doubts arose.”

it’s impossible to know what this means without knowing more about the study and about other gender identity clinics.

Clearly, however, there is a need for more research. Why did this gender clinic see so many children and teens with serious psychopathology? What about other gender clinics? How does this compare to the past? How many patients are we talking about? What were the mental health issues? Did any of the patients have autism spectrum disorders?

Demographic data on trans kids and teens is generally lacking, but there seems to be an increase in diagnoses of gender dysphoria.

“Given the increasing demand for counselling in gender dysphoria in childhood in Germany, there is a definite need for empirical data on characteristics and developmental trajectories of this clinical group.”

This study looked at the patients at one clinic and found that there were significant differences between the girls and boys with gender dysphoria. They suggest that the two groups will need “different awareness and individual treatment approaches.”

Between 2006 and 2010, the Hamburg Gender Identity Clinic saw 45 “gender variant” children and teens. 40 of these patients were diagnosed with gender identity disorder (88.9%).

Differences reported between girls and boys with gender dysphoria:

The girls were older than the boys on average.

A higher percentage of the girls were referred to the clinic at the beginning of adolescence (over 12 years old), although more girls reported an early onset of gender dysphoria.

More of the girls talked about their “(same-sex) sexual orientation during adolescence and wishes for gender confirming medical interventions.”

More of the girls reported self-mutilation in the past or present.

More of the girls reported suicidal thoughts and/or attempts.

The referral rate of girls with gender identity disorder was higher than the rate for boys. They give the ratio 1:1.5. (I am not sure what this means; this is a translation of an abstract.)